Week #48--525,600 Minutes

Hi.

I've officially been on my mission for a year.  Well as of today, I guess it's been a year and 4 days.  But it's casual.  I've just spent 365 days casually wearing a missionary nametag and a skirt (#amishlife) and casually living in Honduras even though I'm a gringa and casually speaking Spanish #TACOS.  It's just like super casual and normal and ordinary, but whatever.

And even though I graduated high school like twenty years ago (or I mean 3 years ago...), I'm still a theatre nerd and woke up singing "525,600 Minutes" at the top of my lungs because some things just don't change and this is one of those things.  

525,600 minutes.  525,000 moments so dear.  525,600 minutes.

How do you measure, measure a year?

In baptisms.

In bug bites.

In gun shots, in baleadas.

In miles walked.

In scriptures read.

In laughter, in strife.

In 525,600 minutes.  How do you measure a year in the life?

What about love?  How about love?  Measure in love.

Seasons of love.

#casual.

So Mezapa's cool I guess.  We're literally in a little town in the middle of nowhere.  But there's still a Chinese restaurant and a bakery that sells really good donuts so I think I'll be okay.  There aren't any laundromats like there were in Ceiba, so I'm back to washing all my clothes by hand.  My favorite thing ever!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!  -__________-  I washed clothes this morning and now my hands are all hurt and blistered and peeling.  #gringaproblems. 

My companion's name is Hermana Vergara.  She's from Mexico and has been on her mission for 7 months.  She's super fun and likes to eat cake, so we get along just fine.  She's only been here in Mezapa for a month, so she doesn't know the area that well yet, so we've been doing lots of exploring and meeting lots of new people. 

On Thursday we met a woman named V.  We met her contacting!  And we had an amazing experience with her.  We knocked on her door (o sea, we stood and yelled "BUENAS" outside her house), she let us in, and we started talking.  Her family is Catholic, but she doesn't attend any church because she feels like organized religion is full of pride and corruption.  She told us that she was meeting with the Mormon missionaries a couple of years ago, but nothing ended up happening.  I told her that it wasn't a coincidence that we knocked on her door, that everything happens for a reason, and she said, "I know.  Before you guys got here, I was praying to God about a personal problem that I've been having.  I asked Him for guidance and answers, and then you came over.  I know that he sent me you two angels as an answer to my prayer."  We felt the Spirit so strongly in that moment. And when I invited her to pray that night to ask God if our message was true, she said, "I don't need to ask.  I know it's true.  I can feel it."  And then we challenged her to be baptized, and she accepted.

#SCORE #casual #thechurchistrue

It rained a lot this week.  Like a lot a lot.  Like 5 days of constant rain.  And the streets here are literally rivers when it rains.  I'm not even kidding.  It was raining so hard one night that we had to go home early.  We were about five or six blocks from our house, and the water was all brown and yucky and almost up to our knees.  So there we were, casually walking/swimming home.  I felt like Bear Grylls (SIDE NOTE: I actually really am Bear Grylls because I'm pretty sure I ate pig brain this week.  We went over to visit this family and they were all like, "HERMANAS EAT THE FOOD," all Napoleon-Dynamite-when-he's-feeding-Tina-style, and then they started scraping meat of the bone which I realized mid-chew was actually a skull.  In my past life, I probably would have thrown up, but Honduras changes you, so I took seconds instead*.  Take that Bear Grylls).  But anyway, there was a lot of rain and a lot of water in the streets, and I was about ready to call up Moses and have him come down and divide the Mezapa Sea so Hermana Vergara and I could cross on dry ground.  Ha.  Ha.  Ha. -_-  Bu anyway, I was going to take a picture, but then I changed into my pajamas and made hot chocolate and read the Book of Mormon instead (#superrighteous #spiritual #whitemormongirl), so I guess you'll just have to take my word for it.

So yup.  That's been my week.  Today I was going to send you guys pictures from the baptism that Hermana Tito and I had last week and from all of my goodbyes in Ceiba but this computer has a virus and so if I plug my camera in, it will die.

So mejor no.

Until next week, my fellow white people.  And fellow Asians.  Shout out to Tim Chan.  BRAIN TRUST 4EVER.

K, whatever.

Love,

Hermana Holdaway

*DISCLAIMER:  I actually didn't take seconds because even though I've lived in Honduras for like ten years, I'm still a white girl who prefers Spongebob mac and cheese or Cinnamon Toast Crunch or Nutella over pig brain.  Some things just don't change and this is one of those things.